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Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto, California has implemented robot mall cops. The egg-shaped machines patrol and scan areas with HD infra-red cameras. Cenk Uygur, Jimmy Dore, and Brett Erlich (Pop Trigger), hosts of The Young Turks, break it down. Tell us what you think in the comment section below.

"He co-founded Knightscope, the company that leases out the robots as a security aid. They are completely autonomous, navigating like self-driving cars. They have high-definition infra-red cameras; microphones that allow the robot to either interact with people or listen for sounds such as breaking glass, and even detection systems that can intercept the pings of mobile phone devices, and license-plate reading software that can process 300 license plates every minute.

The slightly comical Dalek design was intentional, Stephens said. “We could [have gone] two ways: friendly, or ominous. But you don’t want to scare everyone and make them not like the tech; you want it to be comforting. Like a police officer, you want to walk a fine line between having a commanding presence and not scaring a grandma, or little Janie.”

Each unit has self-preservation devices – no offensive capabilities such as a Taser, Stephens was at pains to say, but a loud alarm and geo-tagging so that it can call for help if attacked. But so far the reaction has been positive.”

The Knightscope K5 is a 400 lb robot security patrol, going where humans won't and taking down all footage it can to help prosecute offenders. Would you behave, or would you tackle it? Kim Horcher and Tim Frisch break it down.

"The K5 is a 400-pound, 6-foot tall autonomous security robot that roves parking lot aisles, the hallways of office campuses, sports stadium foyers, and shopping malls on the prowl for suspicious activity. Looking something like a mix between a Dalek from Doctor Who and Eve from Wall-E, it packs sensors like a LIDAR (light detection and ranging) array and cameras that help it differentiate between a harmless passerby and potential criminal, and it feeds all that data to the cloud."